ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1614067
Drivers and mechanisms of cropland abandonment in typical mountainous areas of southwestern China
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China
- 2Key Lab of Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation, Ministry of Natural Resources of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing, China
- 3Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Center, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing, China
- 4Technology Innovation Center of Land Engineering, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Cropland abandonment has become a common phenomenon globally, which not only causes waste of land resources, but also affects agricultural development and food security. As the largest developing country, China has witnessed particularly severe cropland abandonment under the combined effects of socioeconomic transformations and policy adjustments, especially in its southwestern mountainous regions. To systematically investigate the status and determinants of cropland abandonment in typical mountainous areas of China, this study employed multilevel regression analysis based on household surveys to construct a three-level "plot-household-village" Logit model. The research systematically examined influencing factors and driving mechanisms of cropland abandonment, providing scientific evidence for regional land management. The results reveal an abandonment rate of approximately 10.4% in typical mountainous areas of Southwestern China. Spatially, the abandonment rate demonstrates an inverse correlation with elevation, a parabolic relationship with cultivation distance (initially increasing then decreasing), and positive correlations with declining land quality and increasing slope gradient. Regarding determinants, plot-level land quality emerged as the most critical explanatory factor (coefficient = 0.623). At household level, degree of part-time farming and agricultural labor density per unit area showed significant impacts (coefficients = 0.350 and -1.011 respectively). Village-level analysis identified per capita cultivated land area as the primary determinant, exhibiting a significant negative correlation (coefficient = -1.166). These multi-scale factors interact synergistically, forming a complex hierarchical driving mechanism for cropland abandonment. The findings highlight the necessity for differentiated land management strategies that account for scale-specific characteristics in mountainous regions.
Keywords: Cropland abandonment, land use change, Influencing factors, typical mountainous areas, China
Received: 18 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Zhao and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhongqiu Zhao, School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.